Random ramblings, book reviews, personal photos and observations on life from a small town girl with a big heart. Welcome.

10.17.2007

Book Review: If I Am Missing or Dead

If I Am Missing or Dead: A Sister's Story of Love, Murder and Liberation by Janine Latus

The blurb about this book is misleading...upon reading, you believe this is a nonfiction work about Janine's struggle with her sister's disappearance and eventual murder at the hands of a boyfriend, when it reality this is not a "true crime" book at all.

Instead, this engrossing work is more autobiography than anything, as Latus chronicles her childhood, her difficult relationships, and the parallels between herself and her sister when it comes to abusive, difficult relationships with men, and how far a woman will go to please a man. In a lesser writer's hands, I would have been upset at being misled by the blurb, but instead found this autobiography at times engrossing, horrifying, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful in some ways.

Though I likened it to a car crash ("you can't look away"), this is a great nonfiction/biography work. Recommended!